...The American Civil War is said to be “the last ancient war and the first modern war.” One of the last wars with mass cavalry units and the first war which railroads placed a major part. This was a difficult time for the North and South, not only were they fighting a Civil War, they were adjusting to new inventions. They have gone from horse-drawn carriages to railroads, medical practices that had barely changed in a hundred years; were now treating wounds caused by new inventions. This would be a new kind of war for both the North and South. Prior to the Civil War each side had its advantages and disadvantages. If you were to compare them you would find differences in economic, social to cultural even transportation then any similarities. With so many difference and beliefs it’s no wonder they tore the nation apart, fought against family members and destroyed property. The South was in all aspects following behind the North and did not except or want changes imposed by the North. Regardless of the differences perhaps at the beginning of the war the South was ready to defend its way of life. Their over all differences lead to the Civil War and it was not solely because of slavery, but the right to live as they had for years. Before the war you had the upper and lower South who did not agree to secession at the same time. This caused a dividing line not only was the North and South divided the South was divided between its self. These eight states, Kentucky, Tennessee...
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...extent to which the Civil War was the first "Modern" war, but it is impossible to deny that the technology with which it was fought foretold the ways in which future wars would become bigger, bloodier and more devastating. Once the war started, communications technologies ensured that Americans would have much better access to war reports and images than in any previous war. In addition to these field reports, the magazine also published hundreds of articles about the new technologies that were being deployed during the war or tested for possible use. Almost every issue that appeared during the war years contained multiple articles on the newest developments in the construction of warships and weaponry. If the...
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...Advantages that the North had over the South Leading to the Civil War Before the American Civil War had started the North had many advantages over the South that would help lead the North to victory. These resources gave northern soldiers the upper hand against the southern soldiers during many of the battles. Without the advantages the North had over the South, the Civil War could have had a different ending for the United States. The Union was better equipped for the Civil War because of a range of advantages over the Confederate Army that included advanced industrialization and economics, a larger population, a superior Navy, and an advanced transportation network. One of the major advantages that the North had over the South was their advanced...
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...Borunda Mrs. Martinez World History November 20, 2014 The American Civil War Many people know about the Civil War, but not every one knows the details. The Civil War was a key point in U.S. History that brought all the states together and made them into one single indivisible country. Before the civil war started there was the election of 1860. Abraham Lincoln has just been elected into office and many political officials didn’t like that. The Battle Field Lincoln pledges to abolish slavery in all the states, his views were very different from those in congress, and Lincoln wanted a strong nation, one without slavery. This would be fine if slavery wasn’t popular in most states, but sadly it was. There was conflict and disagreement, but most of this conflict came from the south. In the south slavery was a very popular and common practice. Thirteen states from the south seceded from the United States. These states called themselves The Confederate States Of America. According to www.civilwar.org the first battle of the civil war took place at Fort Sumter. On April 12, 1861, Major Robert Anderson was under fire by General P.G.T Beauregard, who was in command of the Confederate forces around Charleston harbor. Major Robert Anderson surrendered on April 13 and evacuated the next day. This The battlefield is a very known subject in all wars but this was one of the harshest wars in American history. This war like any other was fought and won with armies of soldiers. Each side had...
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...Outcomes of the Civil War | How could the outcome of the Civil War been changed? | The Civil War was won by the Union but what would have happened if the Confederates would have won? What would have happened if the Union had won earlier? What would the outcome have been if new technologies had been implemented? These are questions that are not easy to answer. These questions demand speculation and assumptions that are not provable. The best guesses of different outcomes are all we have to work with. The first question, what if the Confederates had won, has many different outcomes. The most likely outcome of this is that the United States would have become five different countries. The Union and the Confederates are obvious but Texas and California would have pushed to become sovereign countries. Utah would have become the fifth country by becoming a Church State. The northwest States probably would have rejoined the Union in the 1930’s due to the Great Depression. Abraham Lincoln may not have been assassinated since John Wilkes Booth did not have a motive for the killing. Lincoln would have finished his career as a senator after twenty years. He would have written his memoirs after the war with many thousands of copies sold mainly in the south. Robert E. Lee would have become Confederate President Jefferson Davis's special envoy to the United States. But the strain of the job, and trying to maintain friendly relations with a former enemy, would have...
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...Prof. Timothy Orr 3 March 2015 Attack and Die Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage This was a intriguing book, the authors offer a different version of the severe loss of life suffered by the Confederacy States of American during the Civil War. The authors pull social and cultural elements together with military history to create their central thesis: the Southern military leadership failed to recognize new tactics and technological advances and willingly threw away men’s lives due to their Celtic heritage. If the South had adopted a more defensive posture, it very well could have weathered the storm of assaults by the Union, but the leadership of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee prevented this because they desired to wage an aggressive war. The book is broken down into different sections, the book begins by comparing Union and Southern losses in battles which major assaults took place and field works. The numbers are very telling, as Southern forces time and again take heavy losses by waging an aggressive war. Union commanders more easily recognized the change in warfare due to technology and more readily adapted; which leads into the part of the book, which discusses at length the reasons for the belief in aggressive tactics. The Mexican war had a profound effect on the thinking of the soldiers who fought in it, and these lessons were remembered and reinforced in the period leading up to the Civil War. The final chapters of the book discuss the cultural...
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...for the Course * * * ___________________ * * by * * * * James Watt developed a steam-powered engine in the late 1700’s that used the pressure of super-heated water to create steam pressure. This pressure moved a slide piston that pushed a rod on a pivot. The motion turned a rotary wheel for as long as the mechanism was fueled and in good repair. The invention of the steam engine was the catalyst for a series of technological innovations developed during the Industrial Revolution that changed warfare after the Napoleonic Wars through to the American Civil War. Steam engine technology led to the development of factory-based assembly line production of materials, the development of the steamship and locomotive, and to innovations in the production of steel from pig iron. These series of innovations created the means for military power to mass quickly and continuously throughout the Civil War. * As steam engine technology continued to improve1 during the early 1800’s, commercial entrepreneurial ventures morphed into a new industrial system that could generate and project large military forces over greater distances faster than ever before. The steam engine lead to the development of steamships and railroad systems funded by investors and constructed by the Army Engineer Corps to support commerce. Navigable waterways and land rail systems, initially developed for commerce, quickly became the means by which forces could quickly deploy over...
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...Civil War Advantages In this short essay I will be talking about the advantages that both the North and the South had during The Civil War. The Civil War was the fight for slavery, the war between the North and the South. The North was trying to abolish slavery, while the South was trying to spread it even more. First we will start off with the advantages of the North, the North outnumbered the South twenty-two million to eight million. They also had more railroad and more factories to make weapons and other stuff that they would need during the war. One reason they had so many more people is because they let blacks fight with them, but occasionally when the blacks got caught they would either be sold or just straight up killed. Here the...
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...CIVIL WAR JOURNALS “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, And is not either to save or destroy slavery” -Abraham Lincoln (1862) THE BACKGROUND CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR (C.W. JOURNAL #1). The Civil War wasn’t only about the fight of freedom for the black people, but also the economics, and the states against the federal rights, lead them to the call of battle. To me, they were important factors that people had their own desire of having the life they wanted. The Economic and social differences between the North and the South became more notable each day. The North needed the South, and the South needed the North. The southern economy was depending on cotton in which they needed the salves to work on. The North had the industries that purchased the raw cotton and turned them into finished goods. This created a major difference in economic attitude, and the North meant the change of society, evolved with different cultures and classes. Other fact that lead them to war was the disagreement the states had against the government. The government felt that the states should still have the right to decide if they were willing to accept certain federal acts. This resulted in the idea of nullification. When nullification would not work, the states felt that they were no longer respected and moved towards secession. ELECTION OF 1860 (C.W. JOURNAL #2). The Democratic Party split into Northern and Southern due the slavery issues. In the Northern democratic...
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...Transformations of Military Technology Transformations of Military Technology The military is armed forces authorized to use lethal force, and weapons, to support the interest of the citizens, and the profession of soldiering goes many years back. The military’s primary reason of existing is to engage in combat and be victorious. This is the primary focus for all military throughout history. Tactics and methods are used for engaging and defeating the enemy in direct combat. However the soldiers and armies have come a long way from the spear, or the bow and arrow. The innovations along with changes in tactics and strategies were crucial to the evolution of warfare. In the middle ages the army, air force, marines, national guards, and navy did not exist. Medieval knights were the middle ages military. Knighthood was awarded to members of nobility. Normally a man must have been born the son of a knight in order to become one. At the age of seven or eight, a young knight would be sent away from home to begin formal knight training, in preparation to dominate the medieval battlefield. In this training, the most commonly used weapons for war were swords and the lance; by horseback riding knights wearing body-covering armor. In addition, the knights were taught to use a wide range of weaponry, from simple tools and farm implements to sophisticated acts of surrounding and attacking the enemy, for capture. Wounds inflicted on the battlefield were usually cuts to arms, legs and scalp;...
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...anti-Confederate Southerners determined the course/outcome of the civil war. Specific information was given by Freehlng to show how the anti-confederates southerners determined the course and outcome of the civil war. The information is discussed in the following paragraph. According to Freehling, the events beyond the battlefields partially determined military verdicts. Furthermore, home front and battlefront unveiled defining aspects of civil war. The division within the south also helped pave the path toward the war and also, the division among the southern and home front dissensions determined battlefield verdicts. The outcome of the war was the collapse of the confederacy that was caused by the defeat in the military sphere, rather than dissolution behind the lines. Anti-confederate southerners piled on psychological, economical and geographical burdens that ultimately helped flatten white confederate’s resiliency. President Abraham Lincoln’s statecraft, the union’s anaconda military strategy, northern democrats and English men’s attitudes seemingly tangential matters bore vitally on southern anti-confederates capacity to influence the battlefields and to illuminate important characteristics of civil war. The tale of the southern house divided, highlights under appreciated gems of civil war lore, including revealing code words, colorful luminaries, key battles and vital military orders, this tells why the war came. In conclusion, the anti-confederate southerners...
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...MILITARY TECHNOLOGY & THE NATURE OF WARFARE 1815 - 1945 With both the World Wars in the twentieth century, conflicts arose that had become somewhat inevitable, yet the nature of which were undoubtedly total wars that had not been anticipated. However, with military technology extending the boundaries of warfare, such conflicts fought on such an unprecedented and devastating scale had been threatening throughout the latter part of the 19th Century. This period was littered with strife, characterized by the American Civil War, The Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War whereby the major powers had demonstrated their threatening capabilities. These bloody conflicts were all typical of 19th century warfare. They were classified in a transitional period between the Napoleonic conflicts of the 18th Century and the total warfare of the 20th Century, in which armies across the globe witnessed an evolution in the nature of warfare. For many, this evolution had been founded upon the transformations in military technology. Furthermore, between 1815-1945, mass industrialization supplemented an ever-changing school of thought surrounding warfare and the deferrals of such conflicts to settle a fraught European Balance of Power created a developing uneasiness between the misunderstandings of modern warfare and capabilities in reality. The consequence was bitter periods of conflict where ad-libbing attempted to allow...
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...Artillery in the Civil War was a reliable, capable and technological advantage for the Union and the South. During this time, some cannons could range up to three-quarters of a mile to one and a half miles. Some imported or larger artillery pieces could range even further distances. When Union soldiers and Confederate soldiers moved across the territories, their artillery pieces would move with them, mobility was essential. During intense battles, positioning of the field artillery was important and the artillery could be used to go forward or sent back, depending on the orders. Positioning and movement meant everything to the field artillery. The field artillery could accomplish its mission only by moving to strategic areas of importance....
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...that started the Civil War. The South was so agitated and ready to fight, that when Lincoln made the decision to “provision” the fort, they immediately believed that the North meant to reinforce it with Union troops. This miscalculated, jump-to-the-worst-possible-conclusion, was favorable to the North because it kept the Border States loyal to the Union. If the Union was to attack first, Lincoln would have lost the support of the Border States, who would have succeeded, making the war impossible to win. This can be compared to the attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Japanese miscalculated the effect that the loss of the ships at Pearl Harbor...
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...Civil War Ranked as the deadliest war in American history, the Civil War tore America apart and took the lives of atleast 600,000 citizens. The war sparked mostly from the dispute over the rights of individual states. It lasted from 1861 until General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The American Civil War could have swung in either direction, but many factors suggested that Union Victory was inevitable.55 First off, the manpower on the Union side was much larger and outnumbered the Confederate army strength. There were 20 Northern states fighting against 11 Southern states. When the war broke out, the Confederate Army had an estimated 750,000 soldiers, whereas the Union Army had about 2 milliion soldiers. The Confederate soldiers had many odds against them. A Yankee stood a 1 in 18 chance of dying due to illness and a 1 in 8 chance of dying in battle. A Rebel faced a 1 in 5 chance of dying from disease and a 1 in 8 chance of dying in battle. Military officers such as P.G.T. Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee brought major victories for the Southern Army. Their military strategies were efficient and powerful, but then again, so were the actions of the Northern Army. Some of the best military officers on the Union side were Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman and Winfield Scott. It is said that the Union Army had much better teamwork and respect towards their officers, when in fact the Confederate...
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